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We are both physicists and work as researchers at universities, consequently we have been accused of not living in the real world. Well we have some news... we do live in the real world; it's all you folks that worry about politics and economics who don't. :-)

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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Just a quickie today. Following last week's missive on the Solar Cycle, I was so overwhelmed by the response of my readers that I felt I ought to post another Sun-related article. ;-)

If you remember, last week, there was the chance of auroras caused by fast solar wind from a coronal hole. They didn't show at low latitudes. However, shortly after that something quite cool happened: all the sunspots disappeared! Just for a day though, now the rotation of the Sun has brought another spot around, close to the solar equator. This one is growing in magnetic complexity which means that it holds more energy for a solar flare which might generate interesting effects here on Earth. If a CME is also released we might have a nice geomagnetic storm...

I should note that according to spaceweather.com a CME was released from the Sun on the 25th April. You can see a small .gif movie here. This one was not directed at the Earth but it might give us a glancing blow causing aurora at high latitude. It is due to arrive some time today or tomorrow - measuements from a point source make it difficult to judge.